The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s: 200-151

It's odd that Mogwai were post-rock poster boys from the start. "Fear Satan" does share some qualities with the drifting ambience initially associated with that term-- it's long, it's reflective, it doesn't have vocals. But this is an unashamed rock song. As opposed to the vein of "post-rock" exemplified by Stereolab, Laika, Disco Inferno, and others who abandoned traditional rock'n'roll building blocks, this doesn't turn its back on classic or hard at all-- at times it sounds like the second half of "Layla" conducted by Glenn Branca. As with Branca, what hits hardest is the repetition-- the way Mogwai remix themselves, playing one ascending figure over and over while piling up the bombast and cascading down into clouds of flute and echo. --Marc Masters

Philadelphia hip-hop collective the Roots had long been making inroads with both leftfield icons (J Dilla, Common) and head-knock purists. But their fourth album, Things Fall Apart, elevated them from a regionally acclaimed hip-hop curiosity (they were an actual band that played live!) to something far more vital. The album's first single, "You Got Me", featured Erykah Badu and positioned the Roots as hired guns for the budding nu-soul movement they were closely linked to. But "The Next Movement"-- a storm-struck, darkly jazzy follow-up-- captured the essence the Roots' relationship with hip-hop. It starts with ?uestlove's kick drum and springy snare hit and is followed by an exuberant "Woooo!", but as playfully jammy as it sounds, the ominous unease lurking beneath the surface gives the song unexpected depth. Bringing together the best of what they'd accomplished to date, "The Next Movement" helped to push the Roots from underground favorites to hip-hop's first team. --Zach Kelly

You wouldn't know it from the retro new-wave pop sound of this hit single, but India-born, UK-based Jyoti Mishra was a twee-pop veteran and ex-Marxist who'd grown up identifying with the anorak underground: Slumberland and Summershine were big labels in his world. When he began recording as White Town in 1990 for the Urbana, Illinois twee label Parasol Records, those recordings were a clear influence on his own brand of jangly indie pop.

Eventually feeling limited by guitars, Mishra turned to his computer for inspiration. The result was a CD single titled >Abort, Retry, Fail?_(Your Woman), which then-BBC Radio 1 DJ Marc Radcliffe discovered in the fall of 1996 and helped turn into a UK #1. The attention resulted in a short-lived U.S. record deal with Chrysalis, and "Your Woman" eventually found itself faring nicely in the U.S. charts. An authentic-sounding throwback to the early 80s synth-pop of UK acts like the Buggles and the Human League that was built on a loop from a 1932 jazz track by Lew Stone and the Monseigneur Band, the track was utterly out of step with seemingly every music trend at the time. Perhaps that's partly why it still sounds great today. --Ray Suzuki

"Ha" was a multidimensional phenomenon that shook the rap world. Everything about the track, from the artful realism of its video to Cash Money house producer Mannie Fresh's cement-brick-bleak production was a step into new territory for hip-hop. But Juvenile himself made the most significant break, offering an impressionistic portrait of a Southern hustler archetype that redefined rap's rulebook. With novel style, Juvenile's conversational verses sketched a man dealing with the world he is given. Unresolved in its judgment of the character, "Ha" feels sympathetic one moment and accusatory the next, pushing rap's narrative boundaries while carving out a space for one of its foremost MCs. --David Drake

From Timbaland to UK garage to microhouse, 21st century beats have been broken (and reassembled) in ways that would have seemed impossible in the early days of rave, when cheap samplers and off-brand home computers were the weapons of choice. Yet 17 years from its release, "Renegade Snares (Foul Play VIP Mix)" is still a thrilling example of how beat science can be experimental and ecstatically affecting all once. It also doesn't quite fit with any of the genres that had laid claim to it over the years. Those titular snares, chopped and chopped again into new riffs, felt pinpoint precise next to the raw loops of breakbeat-driven hardcore. Its sentimental piano melody looked away from the rap-meets-ragga menace of jungle. And while Omni Trio's craft helped give birth to drum'n'bass, "Renegade Snares" was a pop rush, rather than a brooding display of skill. --Jess Harvell

"Bills Bills Bills" wasn't the first great piece of jittery post-Timbaland R&B, but it was the first to offer a performance that mirrored the hyper-finesse of the style's insectile stop-start surfaces. Beyoncé (in lead) is as precise and syncopated as the beat as she vents ("don't know where none of these calls come from," she mimics, waving the phone bill in your face, "when your momma's number's here more than once!"). Behind her, Destiny's Child are inexhaustible in their contempt, while the creepy, stabbing harpsichord arrangement is unrelenting in its judgment. --Tim Finney

Monch was renowned for his lyrical and technical pizzazz in Organized Konfusion, but these qualities were at a low premium in the getting jiggy with it era of late-90s hip-hop. He achieved his pop moment by breaking character. He illegally sampled the "Godzilla" theme, jacking the intro and speeding up a rising four-note brass blurt into battle rap legend. (If you can't wreck fools over "Simon Says", you just can't wreck fools.) He sidelined his wordplay and commanded that we get the fuck up in a telegraphic bark audible from the cheap seats. Many songs strongly suggest this. Few so tangibly exude bodily harm if we don't. --Brian Howe

Sometimes you reach a point with music when comforting sounds are more appealing than fresh or radical ones. At times like this, you can count on the Clientele. The Londoners have always been retro-minded, drawing heavily on the 60s, and on "We Could Walk Together" they offer a rich take on pastoral pop of that era. It's one of their more textural tracks-- rattling drums and plucked guitars create a grainy feeling-- but ultimately it feels cozy and autumnal, like, well, a sweater. There's romance and yearning here, but singer Alaisdar MacLean doesn't force it-- this is music to soak in at your own leisure. --Joe Colly

Ritual De Lo Habitual's "Stop!" is a druggy, ecstatic bit of alt-metal that got stuck playing little sister to the far-goofier "Been Caught Stealing." Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell-- androgynous, streaked with eyeliner, and in possession of an odd, little kid mew-- knew how to twist L.A. glam-metal into something considerably darker, and "Stop!", with its echoing incantations of rebellion ("The world is loaded, it's lit to pop and nobody is gonna stop!"), felt both new and, well, unstoppable. --Amanda Petrusich

1994 was a confusing year for Green Day, as they found themselves riding a ridiculous groundswell of popular success to all sorts of strange places, like the center stage at Woodstock 94. It would be another 10 years before Billie Joe Armstrong would be comfortable enough with this spotlight to attempt something resembling a Big Statement. Back then it was all about "Longview", a song that succeeded so massively because it made wallowing in self-pity sound like a blast. The song's protagonist might be too depressed to even masturbate, but the cheerful singsong melody belies the sentiment entirely. Tre Cool's backbeat swings like the "George of the Jungle" theme song, and even Mike Dirnt's bass intro seems to be chuckling. "I'm so damn bored I'm going blind and I smell like shit" suddenly sounds the invitation to a can't-miss party. --Jayson Greene